I explained what had happened to Green while I flew off with the Barrels again. My thoughts slowed, strained, as I did, but it wasn’t so stressful that I couldn’t think at all, at least not yet.
[Well, I already knew you had met The Hero,] he began once I was finished. [But things are progressing quicker than I expected.]
[A bit faster than I can really grasp,] I said simply, concentrating. [There is a lot I don’t understand.]
[Like what?]
[Well, what is the ‘representative’? I guess I’m the Representative of Green now? A political figure?]
[By technicality,] Green thought. [To be frank, the only reason it hasn’t been filled is that nobody has needed one, up until the Monster King arrived. Also, nobody has been born with the ability to be my representative yet.]
[Meaning?]
[A person is a representative if they are able to contact a god. As you know, there are three types of magic percentiles, and they determine the spells and signature ability a person holds. Someone born with very specific percentiles will have a passive ability to speak to a god that the set of percentiles represents.]
[Seems...strange,] I thought. [Why is it that way?]
[No idea, and I don’t feel like figuring it out. It just is the way it is. Besides, there are other ways to contact us gods, like through shrines.]
[Shrines? So, like, praying?]
[Basically, but they were used more a long time ago. I haven’t asked much about it, but apparently, the others used to run things differently back then. Maybe before the monsters appeared,] he said thoughtfully.
[So there weren’t always monsters?]
[No. This world used to be much different, much nicer. (Or so they say.)]
[Right...So are you just that young?]
[Yes. The last Green left us, and now I exist.]
[Did he di-]
He blared into my mind, [LALALALALALA, we aren’t talking about that right now!]
[Alright...]
Two hours after Zerith had woken and gotten back to his usual activities, he finally got a response from Psychi, outlining everything she needed moving forth. He had quickly asked someone else to get it all in order while he worked on other matters.
He walked through The Bastion after Messaging one of his personal prophecers, and made his way to their room.
The prophecers were treated as their own company, despite being comprised of hardly fifty people, many of whom were only in the corps by technicality, and usually worked like ordinary grunts. The reason why they had their own company was largely historical. The ability to foresee the future was rare, but had always had a special place in Ninjaak.
The prophecers had their own small wing in The Bastion, and this room in particular was supplied everything the prophecers needed to complete their tasks. Compared to most in The Bastion, the room was quite well decorated, with a large, star-pattered blue and white carpet covered most of the floor, a smooth ceiling with hanging, candlelit lanterns, and a closet. It also led into two other rooms, the purposes of which eluded Zerith.
While they were kept close to the walls, there were also desks, tables, and cabinets much of which were filled and topped with items important to the prophecers’ signature magics. Many of the abilities had strange restrictions, or used certain devices like crystal balls or crystals to activate or show the caster whatever prophecy would be created.
Sitting on pillows in the center of the darkly lit room, two of the three present prophecers were preparing. One was filling a box with colored sand, another had brought seven colors of string and was already midway in crocheting something, and the last was working a stove at the end of the room.
They glanced at him and gave him simple greetings, which he returned before saying, “So, have any of you prepared a prophecy?”
The girl buisy with crochet, wearing the same blue-robe uniform as the others, which was unique in the robe’s added pink color, a color which traditionally represented mystery, and by extension the future, spoke first, “No, sorry Zerith, crochet takes a while, you know.”
“That makes sense,” he responded. He had asked the prophecers to begin their work not long after he woke up -he’d thought to do it while he tried to sleep- so they didn’t have much time to prepare. Some prophecies took time to craft, others not long. It was dependent on the strength of the person’s percentiles, and the prophecy.
“I need just a minute more,” the one with the sand-filled box said, fiddling with the grains.
“But I’m already ready,” the last one said, who was manning the wood stove in the back. “Do you want to see me do it?”
Zerith nodded, then approached him. The girl was just overlooking a flat pan that was over the heat, a pitcher of water on the counter. “You’re ready to make the prophecy?” he asked.
Creating a prophecy was no small matter. Prophecies were less useful the more vivid they were, because they determined the future, and were never wrong. At least, so they said. Zerith took the common knowledge with a grain of salt, as he had seen fate change firsthand. At least, it had seemed that way at the time. “What will this prophecy show me?” he asked.
“You’ll see the water shape a scene of your future,” the prophecer said, staring at the heated pan. “But my magic only shows your future…I mean, I’ll see mine, and you’ll see yours, and so on. Are you ready?” she asked.
Zerith put a hand on his chin. “What should I look for?” he asked.
“When I pour water onto the pan, you’ll start to see vivid images in the droplets, they’ll show you small snippets of your future. Anything you don’t look at, you can consider up to your imagination. A-and, of course, Zerith, if you need me to do it again, there’s no reason I can’t try. I hope you know the risks in this?”
He nodded. “I do,” he said. The more he learned, the more he couldn’t change. Striking a balance between knowledge and ambiguity was ideal. “Please, begin when you feel,” he said nicely.
The prophecer took the cup of water in hand, then splashed much of it into the pan. It scattered across it, bubbling, but quickly began to settle into individual drops, which slid about it without boiling or conjoining. “And now, we can look into the water,” she said.
Zerith looked down and watched as a reflection began to glow in the translucent, pebble-sized droplets. He gazed into the smallest one, taking in the image set within it:
‘Zerith was slumped against a wall, bandages around his arm and waist. He looked down without hiding his defeated expression.’
He looked into the largest bubble, wanting to know more.
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
‘He hovered side by side with Psychi, three of the Monster Lords surrounding them as he gritted his teeth. Beneath them was a city.’
The city was one Zerith was familiar with, Zrahl, on the northern front. Zerith looked up, contemplating whether to look at another or not. He decided to.
‘Kynaad stood before Zerith at the edge of a cliff, looking out. Zerith’s expression was one of sadness, and he looked beyond his friend, toward the sunrise beyond with his sword drawn.’
He looked up again. “That is enough,” he said.
The prophecer nodded, then quickly threw the steaming hot water into the sink nearby, and shot off the stove. “I hope that can lead you to answers, at least later,” they said, walking back with their hands formally in front of themselves.
“I hope it will,” Zerith responded absently, before looking back at the prophecer with the sandbox. “Are you prepared?” he asked.
“Yeep, come’ere.”
He walked behind him, overlooking the box.
“Are you prepared to see a portent of the future? My magic can only really see what will happen in the next few days, and what we’ll see are simple words, which try to sum up those days.”
“It sounds difficult to express a day with a single words,” Zerith said curiously.
“It’s much more explicit that you’d think.”
After a moment, he said, “I’m ready.”
“It’ll start with tomorrow.”
The prophecer handling the stove walked back to get a glimpse of the sand as he began to shuffle the sand, moving the box up and down as if he were sifting through it. After he did it three times, the sand made a pattern through peaks and valleys, which vaguely formed a rune: “Skirmish,” the prophecer said.
“A skirmish with the monsters?” he said, wonding if he’d interpreted it right.
“It is usually as explicit as can be,” the prophecer explained. “The first thing to come to mind is likely the truth.”
“Alright, what about the next day?”
They smoothened out the sand, then shiffled through it as if sifting again, the sand seemingly naturally forming a rune: “Battle.”
“Hmm…” Zerith couldn’t think about what he’d learned quite yet. He had a full day to go through before he pondered their meaning, but…his first assumption about the word ‘battle’…
Was that it meant the final wave would begin that day.
Psychi fell into her mostly unconscious state long before she had the chance to check on how Zerith responded to her message.
The mental strain on her consciousness could only be described as horrid, and had she been given the chance...Psychi could barely reason out in her fague state that Psychi...well, herself, would probably lose heart and find some place to rest. It was difficult for her to fully associate with her own consciousness in that state.
In a way, it made her mind clearer.
In other ways, she lost control of it.
Vaazha watched as a pair of massive barrels soared across the land, straight toward the priority point.
He stood at the base of a large wooden tower, high enough to see past the treeline, and vaguely painted to look like a tree, at least from a distance. The priority point itself wasn’t very populated, in fact. It was only a small campsite that held ten people, including himself, though many soldiers would teleport onto the point as a beginning of their journeys to the inner and outer lines. On the other hand, the camps there were significantly larger, despite being much more spread out.
Not far from him was the base to a cannon, which didn’t stand much taller than the trees surrounding the campside.
He stood still, watching as the barrels approached, and the person holding them became less of a small splotch, and more detailed. Vaazha was fairly old, compared to the other Representitives, and as such, happened to be the only one with sight problems.
Eventually, Psychi approached.
Or rather, crashed.
“Shit, shit, shit, she won’t wake up! Featherfall!” he heard Honna say, jumping off a floating walkway of scaffolding and likely using Louden just as the barrels began to fall straight toward the camp. The man floated gently down, saving himself from possible death as the barrels, along with the human flying them, dropped like rocks above the camp.
Vaazha realized, as the barrels fell, that he may have been in danger, and calmly said, “Cold Wave.”
A host of other spells were cast behind him, nearly simultaneously.
“Static Barrier!” “Crashing Wind!” “Dune Mold.”
Rocks and dirt blown about halted first at Vaazha’s Cold Wave spell, which stopped small and some large particles from battering the user, then a yellow barrier appeared directly in front of the tower, protecting it before larger rocks could harm the tower or Representative of Violet, then a blast of wind blew away the smoke in an instant, and finally, the two barrels which slid toward the wide barrier, were trapped in a small dune of mud, halting their momentum enough to save the tower and protect Vaazha.
He had been taken off-gaurd by Psychi’s rough landing, but was hardly surprised that the war-hardened fighters behind him would act well in a pinch.
Honna drifted down onto one of the massive cannon barrels, and quickly climbed to the top. “Sorry about that!” he yelled. “I woke her up, but she’s still not conscious, somehow.”
The Violet-shirted man shrugged. “That’s alright. Inlah, Yazza, could you two please scout for any monsters who may have been nearby?” he asked.
He heard a man and woman agree, then run off behind him as he walked toward Psychi’s landing spot. He quickly saw her face-up in the mud, with an almost blissful expression on her face, her eyes half-open. It was a bit…disturbing.
“Alrighty...” he said, scratching his head. He to Honna. “Can you bring her to Zerith?”
“The Hero?” he asked, surprised. “Uhh, yeah, I can. Why him, though?”
“She’s his recommendation, you could say, so she’s his responsibility,” he reasoned without elaboration. The real reason was because Zerith had asked to see her once she’d arrived, but he was annoyed, so he didn’t bother with it.
“Yes, sir.”
Zerith looked down at Psychi, laying half-asleep in his office’s chair.
This was not what he was expecting. Some guy, (he thought his name was Honee or something, and he’d seen him before) had brought her into his office, explained what had happened to her, then left nervously after Zerith dismissed him politely. As politely as he could, after receiving an asleep Psychi.
He tapped the small piece of paperwork about the evacuation of important objects in Zrahl laid in front of him as he stared at her. She clearly needed to sleep for longer, but...he needed her at the moment. Spending more time on the artillery didn’t seem worth it, especially now that he understood how much of a toll it took on the girl.
Looking at it all objectively, he had at best until the end of the daytime to figure out where that small skirmish would be, and until the end of that to figure out just what was about to happen on the proceeding one.
Zerith narrowed his eyes. She did say she could look into a malleable future when she was asleep sometimes, so...perhaps this wasn’t so bad after all.
But only time would tell.
He sighed, placing his hands over his face. Then, he spoke, letting his true exhaustion leaking into his voice, which almost sounded meek in the solitary room, “Please, be what I need to change fate. Please...don’t disappoint me. Not again...”
Except, the room wasn’t solitary.
Psychi didn’t want to wake up, despite not being asleep.
She was exhausted, and that didn’t feel good. This was all she could muster. One trip, and nothing more. All of those words about fighting to help the people who needed her most, and all Psychi could do was move a hunk of metal.
So it really wasn’t the pain pulsing through her nerves, telling her to give up, which felt bad, it was what made her think that made it so.
I want to be useful. But I just can’t do what they ask of me. I never could.
And somewhere along the line, she heard, “Please, be what I need to change fate. Please, don’t disappoint me. Not again.”
She should have felt anxious.
But instead, Psychi’s eyes briefly rolled open, revealing Zerith, whom she barely recognized past his fearful expression. Psychi briefly smiled...no, she smirked along with the elated feeling in her heart. “I won...t...”
And she finally fell asleep, to dream for the ones who needed her to.
----------------------------------------
“Nothing, huh?” Zerith said, standing in front of Psychi in the room. “Dissapointing, but I suppose it just means we have more time to prepare.”
“S-sorry…”
“Don’t worry about it. Just do what you’ve been doing.”
Psychi’s eyes fluttered. Her mind ached, but she still looked at the paper. Suddenly, a sentence was drawn in. “A town named Hintercil was just attacked. The skirmish will be long over before we can do anything about it, though. If you’re right, maybe we could change that.”